


Cursed

by DangerousCommieSubversive



Category: Young Avengers (Comics)
Genre: Anxiety Attacks, Comfort, Curses, M/M, Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-06
Updated: 2016-12-06
Packaged: 2018-09-06 22:58:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8772706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DangerousCommieSubversive/pseuds/DangerousCommieSubversive
Summary: On a fairly routine patrol, Billy and Teddy find a mildly unusual notebook. Well, no, it’s weird. Ok, definitely weird, possibly cursed. And Billy doesn’t really do cursed objects, which means they have to call a different magical type, and right now that just feels terrifying. (Or: a story in which Billy has a panic attack and Teddy is an excellent boyfriend.)





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [neist](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=neist).



> Commission fic for [](http://neist.tumblr.com>neist</a>,%20who%20is%20an%20absolute%20angel.%20<3)

Billy picked up the book without even thinking about it.

It had been left on top of a crate next to an unloaded gun and a thermos and someone’s half-eaten footlong from Subway. Like it had been brought as lunchtime reading. There were more important things to worry about, really, like the weird cultists or whatever who’d apparently been performing some kind of  _sacrifice_  in this moldering self-storage unit. But he and Teddy had dealt with that, he was keeping the cultists immobilized while Teddy sat with the thirteen-year-old runaway and mangy stray dog that they’d let out of said cultists’ surprisingly well-constructed wicker basket.

The book wasn’t very big, or especially exciting to look at, just a weathered notebook bound in green leather and tied shut with a worn length of thong. He barely even looked at it; it fit into the interior pocket on his cloak as if it was meant to be there, and he forgot about it almost instantly.

One of the cultists said, “Hey, that’s—”

“Whatever you’re going to complain about, you should have thought of that before you decided to start killing people.” Billy rolled his eyes and the cultists were abruptly surrounded by a little bubble of silence. “Hey, Tee, after we get these guys dropped off you wanna go get burgers? We could check out that Sonic that just opened up.”

“Fu—” Teddy glanced at the boy sitting next to him. “Heck yeah. Burgers and milkshakes. That sounds awesome.”

* * *

 

The notebook fell out of his pocket much later that night when they were getting ready for bed, and before he could even see what it was, Teddy had scooped it up from the floor, frowning. “What’s this? I thought your fanfiction notebook had a picture of Aquaman on it.”

“I do  _not_  have a—why am I even trying to claim that I don’t have a fanfiction notebook, we’ve been together how long? Yeah, no, that’s not the fanfic notebook, I don’t know  _what_  that is.” Billy shrugged out of the top part of his costume and starting wiggling out of the leggings, which was always difficult even with magic. “I mean I guess I picked it up somewhere, lemme take a look?”

The green leather was soft in his hand, and the thong felt stiff as he unwound it; he had to work delicately just to make sure that it didn’t snap. Inside, the pages were crackly around the edges, and under the faint trace of Subway “Italian herbs” the whole thing had a not-unpleasant animal smell.

It was also  _completely_  unreadable. “Teddy, this isn’t in English. I don’t know  _what_  language this is.” He held it closer to his face, as though that would somehow cause the graceful little squiggles to resolve into something he could understand. “There’s a diagram here, I think it’s a magic thing, but I don’t know what it’s for…shit, right, I picked this up earlier, those cult guys had it. I meant to mention it to you, but I think I went into a milkshake trance.”

“I mean, they were pretty good milkshakes. Do you think it could be dangerous?”

Billy ran the tips of his fingers gently down the page he’d been trying to read, feeling nothing more than a bit of dust and the peculiar soft-stiffness of very old parchment. “I…don’t know. I mean, I don’t think it’s going to eat us in the night or anything.” And, stifling a yawn with the back of his hand, “Also it’s half past three and I need sleep. I’ll take a look at it in the morning, I promise.”

“Sure thing, I trust you. We can—” Teddy started to yawn too, so enormously that it looked like he would need to shift just to keep his jaw from cracking. “Oof. We can look at it tomorrow, it’s not like we have work. But, uh, leave it over there? Just in case it has a demon in it or something.”

“Good plan.” Billy set the little notebook down on the dresser, and after a moment’s consideration set his hardcover of  _Return of the King_  on top of it, just to weigh it down.

He settled into bed, and Teddy pulled him close, forehead pressing against the back of his neck. “This was a good day,” he said to Billy’s shoulder blades. “We did a good.”

“Yeah,” Billy said, yawning again. He glanced over at the little notebook, but it was still right where he’d left it. “Tomorrow I’ll do. Like. Magic checking things.”

* * *

 

The next morning he woke slowly and awkwardly, groggy after the late night and with the usual dose of morning mouth. Tooth-brushing first, he wouldn’t be able to get a good-morning kiss out of Teddy without hitting that, and then his morning shave and shower. “Fat lot of good that  _you_  do,” he told his razor as he leaned over the sink, “since I’ll have to shave again in the afternoon. I’m sure  _Dad’s_  not this hairy.”

By the time he got back in the bedroom Teddy was struggling upright, looking as if the morning sun was a personal insult. They kissed. Teddy shuffled off to the bathroom with minimal grumbling.

While he was getting dressed, Billy absently picked up the little green notebook from the dresser and tucked it into the pocket of his jeans. It felt  _right_  there. He forgot about it almost immediately and went to go make breakfast.

Teddy didn’t even bother getting dressed; he just came into the kitchen in his bathrobe, a beatific expression on his face. “Did you make  _waffles?_  Like, actually waffles? With that waffle iron that your uncle gave us that we never use?”

Billy handed him a plate. “Actually waffles. Not from concentrate.”

“When did you learn how to make waffles?”

“I mean. Ten minutes ago? We own cookbooks. I wanted waffles, we were out of Eggo, we’ve got all this flour and stuff that we don’t use…so. Waffles. Also scrambled eggs. And bacon! I mean, turkey bacon, but still.”

“I like turkey bacon, that’s why I buy it.” Teddy stared down into his plate of breakfast as if it was presenting him with a revelation from the gods. “You’re so good to me,” he said, and began to assemble a sandwich.

“You better believe it.”

“So what are we doing today? We don’t need groceries or anything, neither of us has work…you’re gonna look at that weird notebook from last night, right? Maybe we can take a picture and reverse Google it, figure out what language it’s in.”

Billy froze in the middle of a sip of orange juice and almost got a hit of citrus up the nose. “Shit,” he said, once he’d swallowed and finished coughing. “I  _completely_  forgot about that thing. I’ll go get it once we’re...”

He drifted off, and Teddy frowned. “Bill. Yo. What’s up?”

“I…I was going to say that I’d go get it from the dresser, but it’s in my pocket.” It took a moment to get the notebook  _out_  of his pocket, actually, and onto a spot on the table that was safe from the hazards of juice and condiments. “I don’t even remember picking it up, I had it under another book and everything.”

Teddy’s frown deepened. “You didn’t remember picking it up last night, either. That sounds like some wacky magic shit to me, I’m pretty sure that thing is evil.”

“I mean, it  _really_ doesn’t feel magical. Most magic stuff kinda…itches to touch. Like Doom’s whole castle. I must have just spaced out. You wanna do laundry and listen to  _Night Vale_? Maybe cook something fancy tonight?”

“That sounds nice.” Teddy glanced over at the notebook. “But we’re looking that thing up first.”

“Yeah, obviously. I don’t just want it sitting around unidentified.”

* * *

 

“Ok, this forum says it’s Tibetan. Apparently it’s Tibetan  _cursive_ , that’s why I didn’t recognize it right away.” Billy tilted his head to the side, as if that would make the photographs on the screen resolve into English text. “ _Gyuk yig_  script. It’s really pretty, actually. Omniglot has a whole ton of resource links, and examples and everything. I think…I think I could figure this out, with a little work. Whoever wrote this didn’t have great handwriting, but it’s not, like, illegible.”

“Cool!” Teddy was sprawled on the couch, his stomach covered in a pile of loose socks that he was matching and folding, one by one. “Tibetan means you can take it to Dr. Strange, right? He’s…isn’t he Tibetan?”

“He’s Cambodian, he studied in Tibet.”

“Cambodian? Really?”

“Yeah. Apparently his parents met at UMass Lowell? Which is pretty cool. I think…” Billy shook out his hands and gestured, his fingertips sparked blue, and an image of the first page of the notebook was projected onto the wall, the text spread out. “I think I can read this, hang on. I mean I think I can figure out at least this first sentence.” He started making notes on a piece of scrap paper, eyes flicking from the projection to his computer screen. “Like…this part is I’m pretty sure the name of the guy who wrote this.”

Teddy absently pulled a sock over his hand and raised it above the couch, a cheery Quenya-printed periscope. “How are you doing that so quickly?”

“Magic, mostly—oh, shit, hey, Mr. Socko. Anyway, I’ve got the resources here, I have an alphabet and a dictionary pulled up. So the info’s  _there,_  I just don’t  _know_  it, but I can  _get_  it if I just twitch things a little bit.” Billy’s tongue stuck out of the corner of his mouth as he typed, then waved his hand, then looked at the notebook, then waved his hand again. “I figure I should have a name to give Dr. Strange. Says here this is the personal magical record of some guy named Lhundup, so it’s probably something he’d want.”

“ _Awesome._  I think that means you have to do some folding now.”

“Sure thing. I’ll call Dr. Strange later.” Billy closed the lid of his computer, stood up, and slipped the notebook into his pocket before coming over to sit down next to Teddy.

* * *

 

It should have been impossible for two people to have accumulated this many t-shirts. At least fifty percent of them were black, too, so it was very difficult to tell Teddy’s and Billy’s things apart at a glance. Teddy being two sizes larger than Billy was  _some_  help, but all black t-shirts look functionally the same when turned inside-out and crumpled up in the laundry basket. By the time Teddy’s phone went off to alert them that the next load of laundry needed to go in the dryer, Billy had been buried under a pile of variably-soft jersey cotton.

“No, don’t mind me,” he said from within his cottony prison. “You go move that over, I’ll keep folding.”

“Sure thing.” Teddy kissed him on the forehead. “Call Dr. Strange while you’re at it, we should get him to look at that thing.”

 _Ok, what am I holding? Yet another black t-shirt. Tag says 2X, that probably means Teddy. Turn it right-side out—indie wrestler,_ definitely _Teddy._  Billy folded, folded, folded, the shirt went on top of Teddy’s stack, and he pulled his phone out of his pocket and brought up the contact for Dr. Strange.

“Shit, what am I even going to  _tell_  him?”  _That some cultists had a notebook in Tibetan? I mean, I don’t know, maybe one of them_ is _Tibetan, maybe it’s a family heirloom. Hell, maybe it’s full of recipes and that diagram is for some kind of cooking setup._

It was all too easy to picture Strange inspecting the notebook and shaking his head, letting out a  sigh.  _“You called me all the way here for_ this, _Kaplan? Couldn’t you tell_ yourself _that it wasn’t anything special? You_ said _it didn’t feel unusual. Perhaps you have an overactive imagination.”_

Maybe Strange would laugh at him—it’s not like the doctor was known for being particularly friendly or easy to deal with. Maybe he’d be angry and demand that Billy never call him again, if it was just to waste his time. Maybe he’d just be  _disappointed._

It was awful to even  _think_  of someone like that being disappointed in him.

Shuddering, he put his phone down on the coffee table and grabbed another black t-shirt. Tag—medium.  _Definitely_  his. And there it was, a Nightwing logo spreading across the chest. He folded it and added it to his own stack of shirts.

He could still see Dr. Strange’s face in his mind, the disappointed frown, the furrowed brow.

His hands were shaking. He tried to pick up another shirt, but he couldn’t quite grip it properly; it fell back onto the pile in his lap.

On the other hand, what if the notebook  _was_  evil? He knew there were a few really evil magical books out there, and  _plenty_  of really evil magic users, it could have belonged to  _anyone._  The binding could be human skin, for all he knew.

And he’d read it. At least the first line or two, as much as he’d been able to translate. He’d read it, he’d handled it, he’d flipped through it looking for clues. It could be…tainted, somehow, or cursed, or contagious, and he’d have just exposed himself to whatever evil like an idiot. What if Dr. Strange found out he’d read it? The Avengers had thought Billy was a threat before; hell, he  _felt_  like a threat some days, although really only before he’d woken up in the morning. If Dr. Strange decided that he was infected or subverted or  _unstable_  or something, they’d lock him up, and he wasn’t sure that he’d even blame them.

He reached for his phone, but all he managed to do was knock it off the coffee table and onto the floor, Dr. Strange’s contact image stared up at him disapprovingly from the screen. He buried his face in his shaking hands. 

* * *

 

It felt like it had been hours by the time Teddy got back from the laundry room. Objectively, Billy knew, it had probably only been a few minutes, but he’d been hyperventilating so badly that he’d lost all sense of time. He barely even moved at the sound of Teddy’s footsteps, face still in his hands, heart beating through his entire skeleton. “Hey, Tee.”

The couch cushion dipped, and there was a warm weight leaning against his side. “So by the phone on the floor I’m guessing you didn’t call Dr. Strange.”

Billy shuddered, unable even to force himself to relax against his boyfriend. “I can’t. I can’t do it.”

“Sure you can,” Teddy said, lips pressed against the top of his head. “I’ll help you with it.”

“No, I  _can’t._  I can’t do it. He’ll think it’s my fault. He’ll just, it’s probably evil, I’m probably cursed now and I’m going to go crazy and they’ll lock me up in a reinforced cell in the Cube so I can’t, like, open the Dark Dimension or destroy all mutants or something.”

“Are you planning on doing any of that?”

“No, but who knows what I’ll do once that thing’s driven me crazy.”

Teddy just sort of  _hmm’_ ed. “Well, you seem pretty reasonable to me right now. Flipped out, but reasonable. And I don’t think they’ll put you in the Cube, because for one, the Cube isn’t actually a thing anymore, they don’t put  _anyone_  there, and for two, if anyone tries to lock you up anywhere, I’ll kick their asses.”

“Then you’ll just get locked up too, you can’t do that just to save my ass.”

“The hell I can’t, I’ll punch Dr. Strange right in the dick if I have to.” Then, after a moment, “Will you be ok for a second if I go to the kitchen and get you a glass of water?”

“I’m not going to be ok ever, I’ve been cursed and I’m definitely going to go crazy. But I’ll live.”

“In that case I think I’ll stay right here for a little bit.” Teddy’s arms wrapped around him, chin coming to rest on the top of his head. “It’s important to have priorities.”

“Your heartbeat is really loud,” Billy said weakly, and then broke into shuddery sobs.

There was another short eternity as they sat together, Billy crying weakly into the front of Teddy’s shirt as Teddy rubbed his back. Teddy’s thunderous heartbeat was easier to listen to than the inside of his own head, and while it didn’t exactly calm him down, it  _did_  help him focus on breathing.

After ten minutes of forever he said, “Would you get me some water? And. Maybe an Ativan, I think they’re on the bedside table. I kind of feel like my soul just leaked out through my ears.”

“I mean we can’t have that. Gimme a second, I’ll be right back.”

While Teddy was in the kitchen Billy shifted, frowned at a sudden discomfort, and reached into his pocket. And the little green notebook was in it.

He threw it across the room like it was a live grenade, just in time for Teddy to come back in with a glass of water in one hand and a tiny pill in the other and say, “Whoa. That was very intense.”

“It was in my pocket again. That thing is definitely cursed and I need it to not be in my house anymore. Also I think I maybe need it to be on fire. Shit, thank you.” He gulped down the pill and half of the glass of water in one go. “I feel awful.”

“I’m not surprised, I don’t think you’ve had a panic attack like that in a year at least.” Teddy sat down again, letting him crumple sideways into a hug. “Still think the Avengers are gonna lock you up?”

Billy sniffled. “I mean. Maybe? But…probably not over this, I guess.” He thought about it for a moment. “I think if I try to call Dr. Strange my throat will lock up, though. I feel like maybe that thing doesn’t want to leave.”

“Hey, no worries.” Teddy leaned down and scooped Billy’s phone off the floor. “I’ll do it, I never even touched the thing.”

“I love you.”

“Love you too, Bee.”

“No but seriously you’re awesome.”

“No, you,” and Teddy was already tapping Call as he pulled Billy close with one arm. “Hi, Dr. Strange? No, this isn’t Bill, this is Teddy Altman—yes, yeah, the boyfriend, that’s me.”

“Number one boyfriend,” Billy muttered into the collar of Teddy’s shirt. “Accept no substitutes.”

“Yes, sir, I’m sure you’re very busy. Last night we picked up some kind of magical artifact, a notebook? Bill tells me it’s written in Tibetan, and we’re concerned that it’s having an effect on him, that’s why he’s not the one calling you.” Teddy turned his head and kissed Billy’s forehead. “Yes, we are home—definitely, come right over, the sooner this thing is out of our house and locked up, the better.” He hung up the phone.

Billy slumped further against Teddy’s side, arms wrapped around his waist. “We need to finish the laundry before he gets here, he’ll be all…judge-y.”

“I think the laundry can wait until we’re sure you’re doing ok.”

Billy sighed. “Oh, fuck, thank you. You’re the best.”

**Author's Note:**

> Share and enjoy! ^_^


End file.
